The most important part of your swing is to keep a somewhat level swing plane, including straight wrists. To get an idea of what I mean, imagine this (or try it out if you want). Say you took a piece of string, about 6 inches in length, and tied a bolt or screw to the end of it. If you held the loose end of the string between your finger tips and swung the bolt around in circles, the bolt would swing around on the same circular plane all the time, provided that you didn’t move your hand at all and maintained a consistent force. The same applies to your golf swing. Your body acts as the stationary point (your finger tips), your arms act as the string, and your hands and the Wii Remote are like the bolt. So what’s my point with all this? The most important part of swinging the remote is to maintain your swing plane, regardless of the angle at which you choose to swing it. For instance, when driving, I like to swing the remote close to my body in more of a vertical motion, straight back, straight up, then back through (I demonstrate this position in the photos acommpanying Driving the Ball at 110% Power). But you can swing at more of an angle similar to a real golf swing, and achieve the same consistency. I know of one player who swings horizontally in front of his chest. It’ll work! You just have to keep everything on a straight path as you swing.

Because the MotionPlus is now tracking your hand movements in a 3-dimensional space, it wants to see that you’re bringing the remote back far enough, not just the strength of your swing, although that factors in as well. So to get more power on your drives, concentrate on a fuller range of motion with your arms and wrists, and not so much on how hard you swing the remote. To give you an idea of what works consistently for me, I like to bring my arms back and up until they are at about shoulder level. I then turn my wrists upward so that the remote is pointing at the ceiling. I then keep rotating my wrists until my arms are as high as they will go and the remote is pointing toward the television. Then I just go backward through all those motions for my forward swing. The wrists are brought back to upright, then back down far enough so the remote is pointing behind me, then through my starting position. My follow-through mimics my backswing (as any golf instructor will tell you it should!). My arms go forward so that the remote is pointing at the television. Then I bring my arms up and rotate my wrists so the remote is pointing at the ceiling once more. Then the remote ends in a position where it is pointing behind me. Notice that I’ve effectively brought the remote in a full circle. That’s a full range of motion which will signal to the MotionPlus that I’ve used as much physical space as possible to swing the club. If you do this correctly, you shouldn’t need excessive force to get your drive in the 95%-100% range.

I want to close with another important detail. Don’t focus so much on making a 100% shot. Squeezing in those extra power percentage points (and throwing out your back in the process) are not necesarrily going to help out your game. I’ve found that it’s much more to my advantage if I lay off my drive a bit, so I can then have a full 100% approach shot, which should be easy to achieve with the same technique as the drive. Taking full shots should be your goal on every stroke. You don’t want to make yourself have to take a partial power percentage shot if you don’t have to. If you focus on using more motion in your swing, you’ll find you can use much less power behind it. I think you’ll also notice more consistency in your shots because you’re always going to use the same range of motion, and don’t have to worry as much about getting the exact force of your swing right every time. It’s much easier to visually see the location of your hands and the remote than it is to determine how to replicate a strength of force in your swing.

This is what has been working for me so far, and I hope it helps you out if you’re struggling with this. As always, I welcome comments below if you have your own routines or techniques to share or have found something I’ve said above does not work for your body type or phsyical condition. Happy driving everyone!